


i'm only good at being bad, bad

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, gladys hating her deadbeat husband, i just like reading about women who hate men!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 15:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: Gladys was made of sterner stuff now, and she had FP to thank for her thick skin. She was done with his drinking, lying, cheating ass, and she was done for good.





	i'm only good at being bad, bad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualfpjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualfpjones/gifts).



> believe it or not i'm not trying to "justify" gladys' actions or make her "likeable" or help people understand her i just like reading women ranting about how much they hate their husbands sometimes and i thought other people might! gladys loves being bad, bitches! 
> 
> lyrics from "bad guy" by billie eillish and thank you briana for inspiring this with your edits! 
> 
> if you say anywhere in your review that you hate gladys im gonna be very disappointed in you

Gladys Jones was a woman without morals, and she liked it that way. 

Morals did little for her but slow her down. Once you got smart enough, you didn’t need anyone else’s judgement on right and wrong, and God knew she’d had enough of other people’s judgement for a lifetime. Gladys wrote her own rules and lived by her own code. Hers. No one else had a say: not this town, not the law, not her dipshit of a husband. Not anymore. 

Fred Andrews had morals, that was true. He was one of the good ones - one of the very, very few good ones. She’d known him since they were kids and she still marvelled at his stubborn commitment to good. She was glad she’d made him Jellybean’s godfather. On the off chance that anything happened to wipe her out early, Jellybean would grow up nice and sweet and normal. That was a big  _ If _ , though. Gladys had no intention of dipping out early.

Gladys owned this fucking town. 

The gold rays of the early-evening sun hit her skin as she coasts along the outskirts of Riverdale in Reggie Mantle’s borrowed car. It was a nice piece of machinery - purred under her thighs like a happy kitten. The new car smell was still on it. She flips her shades down, shakes her hair out in the breeze from the open window. Her arm dangles out the driver’s side as she holds the wheel with one hand, warm from the sun. 

She’d sworn once that she’d never come back. She’d sworn it again after she’d walked out on her drunk of a husband, packed the family car, and laughed all the way to Ohio. She’d hated the whole stinking town since she was in middle school, and yet, here she was. Chances are everyone here had a similar story: dreams of leaving that fell through. Riverdale was a place you were born dying to get away from. 

Gladys had said  _ fuck that. _ Gladys had made this shithole work for her. It was about time she’d got what it owed her. 

While everyone else scurried around the streets of her hometown like rats in a maze, Gladys had been laying her traps. A thread here, a thread there, child’s play, really, but she was careful. No mistakes. One day soon, she’d blow the fuse. 

The fact that she was taking the whole town down with her was a kind of poetic justice. After all the time she’d suffered at its hands she’d be the one to suck it dry. Honestly, the stupid place was begging for it. Riverdale had sat there like a ripe peach after the Clifford Blossom fiasco, caving in from the inside. Waiting for someone smart enough to come along and turn water into gold. 

Waiting for her. 

If all went according to plan, the leeching of Riverdale would set her and her daughter up for life. Jughead too, if he wanted it - she’d leave him something regardless and let him take it or leave it. She loved the kid to bits, no matter how much of a pain in the ass he’d turned out to be. But she had a feeling about him, and her feelings were rarely wrong. He was too deep in his father’s pretty stories. Too righteous, too  _ moralistic _ to let her get away with her due. Gladys didn’t have time to grovel at a teenager’s feet. When he was older, maybe he’d understand. For now, it was her and J.B. It was better that way. 

The house on Elm Street was a nice idea, but it would never last. She knew that now. Gladys had done her time playing Suburban Dreamhouse. FP hadn’t known a good thing when he had it, so now, here they were.  _ He had it coming _ , as they say in showbiz.  _ He only had himself to blame.  _

Her lowlife husband was never born to be a criminal. A drunk, maybe, a lazy pickpocket, but not a criminal. FP hated the place too, but didn’t have the foresight to think outside of the city limits, had lowly little small-town aspirations - a house on the nice side of town, a 9-5 job. Since they were kids, he’d pinned all his misery on the south end of town, the fact that he was born on the wrong side of the tracks. FP wanted to cross the tracks and settle down and that was it. 

She’d thought it was cute, once. She’d thought a lot of things about her husband were cute. She’d been soft on him, and that was her downfall, she supposes. The moment he’d walked into the Whyte Wyrm in his letterman jacket, sticking out like a billboard, and she’d given the idiot a cursory once-over and thought to herself, almost incidentally:  _ he’s cute.  _

And then he wasn’t cute. And then he was very, very far from cute, and then he was so repulsive she hated the sight of him. Sometimes, lately, a nagging affection came back like a disease, the most fleeting of fondness for his messy morning hair or his earnest attempt at wooing her again - but she shut those thoughts down as soon as they arrived. Gladys was made of sterner stuff now, and she had FP to thank for her thick skin. She was done with his drinking, lying, cheating ass, and she was done for good. 

Even in these rare moments of tenderness, there was no guilt. None. FP would take the fall for all of it, and be too stupid to realize what was happening until she was long gone. That made her happy. FP had coasted through their life together for too long, thinking he could do whatever the hell he wanted and get away without punishment. It was high time for some karmic payback. 

Gladys Jones could play God. 

Fred Andrews had morals, but he was no sheep: he decided right from wrong and he upheld it. Gladys was just as staunchly wedded to being a bad guy: she was deep in her badness and she loved it. FP was weaker stuff - he waffled from one to the other and still expected to be praised. Still expected to come out on top.

But FP had never been a winner. Gladys was the winner. At least she had been up until she married him. 

She runs through the plan again, all her moving pieces. Diligence, that was what she taught her daughter. Be diligent, but have fun with it. Be whatever the hell you wanted to be, but be smart about it. 

FP was stupid. Had always been stupid, and after a while, he’d dragged her down into his stupidity with him. Gladys Cohen had been in charge of her own future. Gladys Jones was a stupid woman with the same deadbeat husband waiting at home for her that every other stupid woman had. Innocent women who had made one miscalculation and ended up married to shit. Her mother had been in that position once. Hell, so had his. There were a lot more good women than there were good men in the world. 

He’d trapped her into a life she’d never wanted, and then he’d whined that it was her fault. After she’d done nothing but bend to his every whim the entire time they were married, always cleaning up his messes and wiping his hands clean. 

FP had wanted a house, so she’d played housewife. Then they’d lost the house, because FP had lost his job, and she’d packed and stored and sold everything they owned that didn’t fit in a crappy little double-wide a stone’s throw from where they’d grown up on the shit side of town. And still, he whined. Still, everything was unfair to him, everything was someone else’s fault. Fred’s. His father’s. Her’s. 

She’d thought maybe it would be the kick he needed. Landing on his ass in the trailer park he’d grown up in would force him to look long and hard in the mirror, maybe pull his act together enough to fix things with Fred. Or else they’d lean on one another, maybe rob a liquor store or two outside of town, fuck in the getaway car, like in the old days. But instead, he’d slumped into booze, spending days in a slack-jawed stupor in front of the TV. Forgetting about Jughead’s science fair. Forgetting to pick up Jellybean from a sleepover. Forgetting everything, in fact, except that night’s football scores. 

Then causing scene after scene in public. Passing out on the front lawn. Starting fights and breaking dishes. Crying whiskey breath against her neck at night, asking over and over for forgiveness. Refusing to go to the A.A meetings. Scaring their children half to death. Whining when she asked for the simplest of courtesies like she was some nagging housewife that had to learn her place. Coming home later and later until he stopped bothering to come home at all. 

And the whole time the sex was horrific. And she looked like the fool. 

Well, Gladys Jones held grudges. 

Then she’d learned from Archie in Toledo that FP and Fred were on speaking terms again. That her husband had a _ job  _ again, was going to meetings, was working on himself. It had sounded too good to be true. Sure enough, she’d come home and found out he was fucking a cult-deranged Alice Cooper on their marriage sheets. 

So.  _ He had it coming.  _

A shotgun to the head would be too good for him. No. She had to watch him unwind. She’d designed this game, and she’d designed it to hurt. Hurt him the way he’d hurt her with his insolence, his brain-numbing stupidity. Time and time again she’d almost caved, convinced herself that she could forgive him, but this was the final nail in the coffin. This one was punishable by death. 

If it was Fred, it would have been different. She, FP, and Fred had always had an arrangement that worked. But Alice, in addition to being a slap in the face, was Gladys’ own sloppy seconds. God, it made her fingers itch. And yet she had no doubt that they both disparaged her, had decided that she was to blame. Probably talked shit about her, curled up in her mother’s bedsheets, on a trashy trailer-park mattress. Both of them not knowing how good they’d almost had it. 

She parks the car across two spots and gets out, the engine still humming. Her high-heeled boots snap like gunshots on the concrete steps as she lets herself into the diner. 

“Slice of cherry pie, Pop.” He leaves a strawberry milkshake on the counter as he moves to get her pie, bound for a table near the window, and she eyes it as she slaps a few bills on the counter. It’s the same rush she got in high school after pinching money out of the tip jar at the Wyrm - it wasn’t her money to worry about. She could order whatever the hell she wanted. 

Her eye lands on an occupied booth across the diner as she nibbles on the cherry she’d pinched off the milkshake. With a decisive toss of her head, she saunters up to the dark-haired students. 

She dangles the keys at Reggie Mantle. “Brought your car back.” He reaches for the keys and she pulls them away. “I still need a ride home.” 

He just nods. A little scared of her, but mostly respectful - and that was how she wanted it. She wasn’t interested in terrorizing kids, just teaching them who was boss. Teaching them what was possible. Pop drops off her pie and she stabs it with the fork. 

Self-respect, that was what FP was lacking. Alice Cooper had even less, by the sound of it. She’d have put him through this anyway, but it just gave her that little extra push to make him suffer. Once it all went south, FP’s stupid ass would have a decision to make. He could go cry to Alice and land on his ass. Or he could go seek comfort from anyone else and end up the same way. No favours for FP Jones. Not ever again. Oh, it was going to be fun. She was having fun already. 

Gladys spears a mouthful of her pie and grins. It was good. Best pie in town. 

Or maybe everything tasted good when your husband was about to get what was coming to him. 


End file.
